COSI Insider

Welcome to what will hopefully be the first in a series of fun experiments with COSI. Usually when we are doing something cool in the building, be it a show or one of our hallway activities, we know what the outcome is going to be. For that reason we cannot properly call them experiments since we already know what is going to happen. That is why we always get excited when we run up against a question from a guest or another team member that we do not know the answer to. Last week we came upon one of these unanswered questions and knew it was time to try an experiment.

When we invested in the advanced digital technology to reopen COSI’s Planetarium we knew that we could do much more in it than just traditional sky shows and even the new capacity to show full dome movies.

So it was a thrill to see the Congregation of Tifereth Israel use COSI in a very creative and impactful way that started to show us our capacity to do special programming with partners who see the value in tapping our digital assets and willing to invest in program exploration with us.

Ahhh fall. Changing leaves, apple picking, carving pumpkins, and the chance for some fall-related science! As you can tell from my profile photo, I’m a Halloween girl - so any excuse I have to bring Halloween fun to an experiment, I’m in.

Imagine heading out on a beautiful fall day to enjoy the splendors the season has to offer. Perhaps this journey takes the form of watching the leaves change color, heading to the pumpkin patch or apple orchard to gather from the abundant crops, or perhaps heading to your local coffee house to indulge in the latest pumpkin latte craze. Whatever your favorite seasonal pastime, 100 years ago you may have found that your day may also have included the skies darkening at high noon for hours on end. Strange as that may seem to us now, the massive colonies of passenger pigeons that would be migrating across the skies of the continental U.S. would make this natural phenomenon a common occurrence during the changing of the seasons.

Have you heard about the SURGE network? Simply put, it is a collaboration between several Columbus institutions (including COSI) which offers free, technology-based learning opportunities for teens. But attached videos will tell you much, much more...